


Litmus Red

by spuffyduds



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Dreams, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set post-X2, so, spoilers.  Written for a ficathon, for the prompt of "Post-Jean's death, Scott grief fic. Possibly based on Don't Wake Me Up by The Hush Sound. "Don't wake me up / I am still dreaming / The story's undone / Unravel at the seams / Don't wake me up / Death is misleading / And when I fall asleep / Sleep with your ghost." Some slashy undercurrents, if you have those goggles on.</p><p>I'm tagging my X-Men fic as Movieverse because that is the casting I see in my head, but honestly I have read/watched so many X-men continuities that they all blend together in my brain into one vast Jungian Uber-X. So, if you're one of those impressive people who CAN keep straight which canon is which, my fic may hurt your soul.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Litmus Red

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-X2, so, spoilers. Written for a ficathon, for the prompt of "Post-Jean's death, Scott grief fic. Possibly based on Don't Wake Me Up by The Hush Sound. "Don't wake me up / I am still dreaming / The story's undone / Unravel at the seams / Don't wake me up / Death is misleading / And when I fall asleep / Sleep with your ghost." Some slashy undercurrents, if you have those goggles on.
> 
> I'm tagging my X-Men fic as Movieverse because that is the casting I see in my head, but honestly I have read/watched so many X-men continuities that they all blend together in my brain into one vast Jungian Uber-X. So, if you're one of those impressive people who CAN keep straight which canon is which, my fic may hurt your soul.

They're standing by Alkali Lake, and they're having a discussion about chemistry. Not _their_ chemistry, not the glorious meltdown that happens when two buttoned-down upright people become unbuttoned and horizontal together. No, they're talking about _high school_ chemistry. They could be kissing each other, her wide mouth laughing into his, his visor digging into her cheekbone, she likes it like that; they could be fucking, painful good on the gravelly shore, but they're talking about litmus paper and Scott is saying, "Alkaline should turn red to blue, but look, this happens _every time_, it's a reproducible result but it's just wrong wrong wrong," and he picks her up, throws her in--so light, bird bones. But she sinks so much heavier, sinks like she was made of lead and stone and guilt. And the whole blue lake turns red, fire red blood red, but he can still see her, she's smiling up at him with her hair flaming around her, and he says, "Why does that _happen_?" and she holds her arms out, gives him an elegant shrug, floating there under the burning water, and says--how can he still hear her?--says, "The multitudinous seas incarnadine."

"What?" he says. "It's a _lake_."

**********************************************************************************************

Which is when he always wakes up, having just said the stupidest possible thing. Having had her in arms' reach and _thrown_ her instead of held her. He could _smell_ her in that damn dream, he could smell her and he didn't kiss her; talked about litmus paper when he could have had his face in her hair, his hands in her clothes, his fingers in _her_.

"Lucid dreaming," he says aloud into the dark of their room, his room. "Next time." But it never works. He _tries_\--meditates before bed and tells himself he's in charge, he can make things happen how he wants them. Never works. His subconscious has gotten lazy; he'd gotten used to her being his dreamcatcher, his spirit guide, his sandman. When it was _their_ room, their bed, if he had the slightest twist toward a bad dream, the least stir and sleepgrumble, she was there; an warm arm around him, a warm thought in his head, steering him towards the happy.

He'd objected, at first. It seemed childish, to need to be led away from nightmares.

"We all see enough horrors during the day," she said. "What's the point of reruns?"

"When you put it like _that_," he said.

But now, when his only chance to be happy with her is in dreams, she's not around to make the dreams come out right. Which is why he _needs_ the dreams to come out right, and it's all very circular, that's some catch, and he can't make it make sense because he can never get back to sleep after that one, and lately that one comes every night.

***********************************************************************************************

He pulls on some boxers and goes down to the kitchen, and Logan's there like he usually is when this happens.

"Hungry," Scott says.

"Me too."

Scott rummages through the faculty snack pantry. He made a sign for it, probably a year ago now, that says, "OFF LIMITS TO STUDENTS." The day after he posted it, it was enhanced with a crayon drawing of Wolverine hoisting a child into the air, impaled on his claws: look what happens if you violate the teachers' cookie stash.

Scott's never figured out if one of the kids drew it, or Logan himself.

And now the Oreos are gone.

He looks bleakly at Logan. "Did you take the last of the--"

Logan holds up the Oreo box, ripped open; puts the last stack of ten or so on the table, rests his fist on it--and slooowly snickts out a claw. _Spears_ them, and flips Scott off with his middle claw stacked with cookies.

And Scott quietly loses it. That fucking dream again with the drowning and the fire and blood, and he just wanted _one goddamn cookie_, which is not that much to request from the fucking universe, _is_ it, and he grabs Logan's wrist, opens his mouth so wide his jaw hurts, plunges and bites down and pulls the top three cookies off.

Logan gapes at him for a minute, finally says, "Jesus. You've kind of losing it, there, Scott."

"I _know_," he tries to say, but can't around the Oreos, so he tries to crunch down and swallow some but they're too much too dry and he chokes a little. Logan pounds him on the back and Scott glares at him--wrong answer, there, they've all _had_ Heimlich training.

But the chokes and coughs wind down and Logan stops pounding and pours him a glass of milk and Scott decides he's really too tired to review emergency procedures.

So, instead, he starts telling Logan about the dream. He can't figure out why for a minute, but then realizes that, out of everybody in the mansion, Logan's the one person whose opinion of Scott can't really be lowered.

He spills it all out, lust and stupidity and litmus paper, and then they just sit. He's trying to gather up the energy to get a paper towel and wipe the crumbs off the table, because the last time the mansion got mice some of the telekinetic middle-schoolers had flying mouse battles, and nobody needs to see _that_ again.

"Every night?" Logan says, drums his fingers on the table.

"Yeah."

"You need--man, I can't believe I'm saying this--but you need to get the Professor to help you out, get rid of those for you. You need to," Logan stalls for a second, knots his fingers together, "you need to let her go."

"But what if--" Scott hasn't quite figured out what he was thinking until now he's saying it, but now that he's saying it, it sounds--possible? Plausible? In _their_ world, who knows?--"what if that's somehow actually _her_? What if it's not me obsessing, what if it's her---spirit, psychic energy, something—trying to talk to me?"

"If that's _her_," Logan says, "then you need to let her go even more. Because that's _fucked up_."

"Yeah," Scott says. "Yeah."

******************************************************************************************

He goes back to bed, and maybe it's the milk or maybe it's the decision that, yes, tomorrow he'll get the Professor to help him out, that he'll get this out of his head at last, but for once he goes back to sleep.

******************************************************************************************

They're standing by Alkali Lake, and they're kissing. Finally, _finally_, he thinks. Her mouth is hot and he can't leave it, fumbles her clothes off while they're still kissing and she's hot everywhere. She peels his off with her clever hands, wraps her legs around his waist but she's weightless, levitating, a spirit of the air. He slides inside and she's so hot she's scalding, so hot it hurts and it's wonderful and he is never leaving, never, and she puts her mouth to his ear, whispers, "I'm really real, I'm really here, come see me," and he's coming.

 

\--END--


End file.
